"He gave me to know," said Owen, bleeding words freely now that the worst was said, "that if he had no son of his body, by marriage with his first daughter I should be his heir."
David must have laughed at that, knowing already what they did not know, that his Elizabeth was again with child, and certain in his own mind that this time she could not fail of providing him a son. And so she had, and the grand inheritance David had earned for him was a shameful exile in England, bereft of all lands and honours. So far had he overreached himself.
"He was to let us in by the landward gate, and lead us to the lord prince's room. And when Llewelyn was dead, then David's men and mine would take possession of the maenol and name him prince in his brother's place. And to this we all swore, and set our seals, if you doubt my word. But the floods turned us back, and the day passed without that terrible sin."
"I thank God!" said Bishop Einion.
"And we thought it was over! That we had done no more than sinned in intent, and wasted our labour and time, as we deserved, that we were safe, and it had all passed without effect and without detection. But time and vengeance have pursued us ever since, thus slowly and surely, without any haste."
"God's time is endless, and his patience without limit," said the bishop. "Never think that he has forgotten, or failed to see." And he said heavily: "Have you done? Or is there yet more to tell?"
"I have done," said the poor wretch, grovelling.
"I cannot yet give you absolution, there is more required of you than confession. Do you empower me freely to say to the lord prince all that you have said to me?"
"Oh, my lord, with all my heart I entreat you to, and to lift this burden from me. I want to make what amend I can."
"I will speak for you," said the bishop, "but with a heavy heart. Yet if you mean that truly, there is grace to be had." And he sent for those guards who had brought the prisoner, and committed him again to their charge, to be returned to his prison. And I wrote to the end all that I had to write, and took it with me to await the prince's bidding, after the bishop should have spoken with him. But all that while that I waited—for it was no short telling—I could not cease from seeing David's face, after the night was passed and he had lain lost in his wife's arms until late in the morning, a face so weary and so at peace, as though after his own confession. I remembered its wondering humility and gratitude, washed clean of all greed and desire, even if that state of chastened bliss lasted not long. That was when he had thought, like Owen but with how much more intensity, that it was over, that his mischief had been prevented and his better prayers heard, that he was delivered from evil. While at every step the shadow of his act, which was itself now only a shadow, trod hard on his heels and waited its due time to lay a hand upon his shoulder.
"Once I have heard it," said Llewelyn when I went in to him, "now let me hear it again as you took it down from his own lips." And I read to him, he sitting perfectly quiet and alert and calm, all that deposition of Owen ap Griffith, how the prince's death was to be brought about by the connivance of his own best-loved brother, and that brother exalted to his vacant sovereignty over the principality he alone had made, single-handed, out of chaos. By the time it was done the last daylight was dying, for the days were short then, and I got up to go and trim the candles, but he put out a hand with a sharp, pained gesture to halt me, and: "Let be!" he said. "There is light enough left for me to see where I am going." So I sat down with him again, and waited.
"Once," he said, musing, "he rode at me headlong on the field of Bryn Derwin, mad-set to kill or be killed, but that was in open combat, face to face. I had not thought he hated me enough to conspire with so small a creature to spit me to my bed while I slept. Explain him to me, Samson, if you can, for I am lost."
But I said never a word, for there never was any creature living under the sun could truly explain David, least of all David. He knew himself, and even his lies were never disguises from his own self-knowledge, but knowledge is not understanding.
"Though it is but a step," Llewelyn said out of the gathering dark, "from seeing Wales as his inheritance after me, since I am celibate, to growing impatient at the waiting. He is not the first to want to hasten the succession. The same impatience has been the death of more than one Welsh father, since time was. Strange that I never saw it as having any influence between him and me. And now, Samson, tell me, how often am I to turn the other cheek?"
"No more!" I said. "Now you must think only of yourself. He has made himself the enemy, it is none of your doing."
"No," said Llewelyn, "there's more at stake. Bear with me an hour or so, Samson, while I think for Wales."
In all that he said and did then, it was for Wales he was thinking, and for that cause he was able to suppress his own desolation and grief and anger, and forgo his own revenge.
"I am walking a ridge between two abysms," he said after he had been some time silent. "The two most powerful men in Wales, after me, have made common cause again me, and what I do now against them every princeling in Wales will be watching, and what I do must be seen to be justice, that they may accept it and take warning, but it must not be seen to be tyranny or cruelty, or others will be antagonised. I stand to lose allegiance whether I am too harsh or too merciful. If they conclude they may lightly break my peace, and not be crushed, some will do it, as they did it lightly in the past when Wales was not one, but many. If they think the measures I take too extreme, they will fall away out of indignation. If only I had had this land twenty years longer, even ten years, without interruption! It would have withstood all forces bent on breaking it apart. But this is a perilous time. We are not yet what some day we may be, God willing. We are not a state, not even a people. We are a loose bonding of little lands and tribes and families, of men who see no further forward, as yet, than tomorrow, and for a small, snatched advantage today will throw even tomorrow away. There is no man but Llewelyn can hold Wales together. If," he said, very sombrely, but with resolution rather than misgiving, "if Llewelyn can."
I waited and was still, for he needed no word from me. For a while he, too, was silent, and then he resumed: "I may not take revenges like other men. I may only bring offences to justice. Did you ever consider, Samson, what a cruel deprivation that may be, that afflicts kings and princes, not to be permitted to hate and resent, and feel outrage like other men?"
I said, only too truly, that it was not a deprivation from which all kings suffered. In the darkness he laughed, but somewhat hollowly.
"But by their own deed, duly sealed," I said, "all Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn's lands are forfeit to you."
"No," said Llewelyn. "Only if they offended again, and that I cannot charge, for this, however magnified now, is the past offence. So much justification I have for being patient and lenient. Not for their sakes, God knows, though I would rather have them as allies than enemies, but for the sake of Wales. Owen I hold, and will hold. He is safe enough. David I have lost for the time being, and he must wait. But Griffith is there in Pool, and thinks this whole matter over and finished, for his part in it, for he knows nothing yet of his son's confession. I do not want Griffith dispossessed, I do not want him prisoner, I want him bound to me, with all Powys—for Powys I cannot spare. I want him shaken and chastened, but not broken or humiliated further, so that he shall be glad to hold fast to me and keep his own. And if I can bring him to a manner of reconciliation and renewed fealty, I will do it. I must preserve the wholeness of Wales as best I may, and at whose cost I may, liefer my own than break this land apart."
"News travels fast, even when few seem to know it," I said. "Griffith knows of David's flight before now. He may draw the same conclusion from it as his son drew. There is need of haste."
"There is," said Llewelyn sombrely, "but of care, too. And I have not forgotten that there are only a few days left before I must set out for Shrewsbury, to meet King Edward. I am bound to him by treaty, and I agreed to the twenty-fifth day of this month, and go I must, though I
would rather far that I had this matter of Griffith and Powys safely behind me, and could come to my first formal meeting with Edward as master of all Wales past question, with no dissentient. My fealty and homage would be paid on so much sounder a stand, and I could press my demands over the borders with so much stronger a voice. But there is no time. Until I come back from Shrewsbury, the less that gets out about Owen's tale, the better. We'll not alarm Griffith too soon if we can avoid it. And it may be that the next move will come better from a prince already safely installed in fealty and alliance with the new king of England, and invested with his overlord's authority in the marches as well as his own."
"And David?" I asked.
"There is nothing I can do about David at this time," said Llewelyn heavily out of the mourne darkness. "Neither embrace him nor kill him. As well! I might be tempted to kill rather than to embrace. When next I meet with David we may finish, one way or the other, what was begun at Bryn Derwin."
On the twenty-second day of November, therefore, the prince, with a large escort and in noble state, set forth on the journey to Shrewsbury to meet with King Edward there, and to swear the oath of fealty and perform the act of homage to the sovereign in person, as he had always intended and considered himself bound to do, for though he maintained his position that the treaty had been frequently infringed, he did not hold those infringements as being grave enough to cancel his duty under it. As he was pledged, so he meant to do.
Had those two met at Shrewsbury that day, my story and my prince's story and my country's story might have been altogether different, blessedly different. And this is the lost moment for which, I see, no man can be blamed, but only some malevolent chance as wanton as lightning stroke. For at Shrewsbury we were met, on what should have been the eve of that encounter, by a messenger bearing a letter from the king, written at Cliff, which was a hunting-lodge he had in Northamptonshire, on the very day Llewelyn set out from home. Edward had got so far, when he was taken ill with the sudden and violent bursting of an abscess, and was so much weakened that he could not continue his journey. He wrote regretting that illness prevented him from keeping his engagement, for he could not ride, but said that he would try to arrange another mutually agreeable date and place as soon as his health permitted. He did not fail to add a reminder that there were arrears of the money due under treaty still outstanding, and requested that they be paid, for even on a sick-bed Edward was a man of business. But having stated his reasons for withholding those sums many times, and also his willingness and ability to pay them as soon as he got satisfaction on his part, Llewelyn did not then pay much attention to that pan of the letter. For since his first priority was thus frustrated, he was able to turn his mind and attention, with relief, to the second.
"We go home, then," he said at once, roused and fierce, "and set about the business of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn."
He wrote in reply to Edward's letter, also regretting that the meeting was prevented, and by such an unwelcome cause, and wishing his Grace a speedy recovery. And then we turned our backs on Shrewsbury and rode hard for home.
Our best hope, unrecognised, we left lying broken behind us.
Of those five nobles and clerks that Llewelyn chose to go as his ambassadors to Pool, led by Cynfric ap Ednyfed, Tudor's brother, I was one. Always he relied upon me to render an account faithful to the last detail, and I think found in me a mind tuned like his own, so that what I distrusted he took care to examine carefully, and where I found matter for sympathy he was at least willing to examine and withhold judgment. Whatever his reason, I was among those chosen. We had our orders, strict and precise, for his will was to win back Griffith and Powys with a whole heart, and he was prepared to go far to ensure success. Our task was to present ourselves formally at Pool as representatives of the prince of Wales, and to inform Griffith honestly of the content of his son's confession, without prejudice to his reply. For we were to invite him, and by all possible means persuade him, to return with us of his own accord to the prince, not as a prisoner but honourably as our companion, to make his answer to what his son Owen alleged, either to clear himself freely of the charges therein made, or, if he pleaded guilty to them, as the occasion was already past and had accomplished no evil, to confess to them and throw himself upon the prince's mercy, which he was assured should not be denied.
This, I swear, is what Llewelyn charged us with when he sent us forth. Do you know of another prince, so threatened and so abused, who would send his envoys with such large terms to his enemy?
On the last day of November, in a cloudy and melancholy afternoon light, we five rode into the town of Pool, and down to the river meadows where the castle was raised. We bore no arms, and went unattended, in token of the openness and honesty of our intent, and at the castle gates asked audience of Griffith in the name of the prince of Wales, his overlord, on matters of state. Peaceable as our aspect was, it aroused a great deal of fluttering within, until Griffith sent word in haste to admit us at once, and himself came hurrying out in his furred gown to meet us on the steps of his great hall. His heavy-featured face wore a fixed and somewhat ungainly smile, with little true welcome in it, but a great effort at appearing welcoming. He bore himself as though nothing had happened since April, when he had confessed to disloyalty and resigned himself to the loss of some part of his lands and the enforced absence of his eldest son. Having cleared that account in full, his manner seemed to say, there can be nothing in this visit now to trouble my conscience, and nothing to fear. But his eyes looked sidelong and were not quite easy. Whether any word had reached him of Owen's confession or no, certainly he knew of David's flight.
Our part was to be grave, detached and impartial, for it was possible, if hardly probable, that Griffith had not been admitted to the fullest extent of his lady's and his son's design. Princes can be dispossessed and their lands usurped without going so far as murder. But I grant you it was not likely he should be innocent, and our errand was to make it clear to him, even so, that he need not dread extremes if he returned willingly to his fealty. When he brought us into his high chamber and dismissed all other attendance, Cynfric as spokesman delivered our embassage.
"You know, my lord, as all this land knows, that the Lord David has fled to England, instead of standing his trial on suspicion of plotting against the sovereignty of the lord prince. The prince sends you word by us that since that flight your son Owen has voluntarily made a full confession of conspiracy to treason and murder. He charges that you are also implicated, on these heads." He recited them, with date, place and time. Griffith sat stiff and erect in his chair, his countenance motionless, only his eyes flickering now and then from face to face round the circle of us. "The prince urges you," said Cynfric, "to return with us to his court, and to make your answer to his face concerning these charges, either to clear yourself and satisfy him, if you are innocent, or to repledge your fealty and ask for and obtain his clemency by confession if you are guilty. The event is past, and for what was then known of it you have already made reparation. If you will accept the prince's grace and return to your troth you need not fear that mercy will not be forthcoming."
Griffith asked, in natural anxiety, after his son.
"Your son is in close hold," said Cynfric, "but safe and well. No harm has come to him, no harm will come. His offence is purged. If the same honest peace can be made with you, the matter is over."
Griffith sat for a while in glum thought, and then roused himself to play host worthily in his own castle, shaking off the heaviness of uncertainty.
"You must give me time to speak with my wife," he said, "and consider what I do. Stay overnight, and give me the privilege of feasting the prince's ambassadors, and after dinner I will give you my answer."
And that we did, accepting it as a good sign, for surely he was visibly resigning himself to the inevitable agreement, having so much to lose by enmity and so much to keep and conserve by humility and good sense. He presented us to his lady, who kept a calm,
unsmiling face, ceremonious but not gracious, and sat among us at the high table as stately as a queen, and jewelled. Hawise Lestrange was as tall as her lord, but slim as a willow, with long, elegant hands and long, elegant face. Without the slightest friendliness she took excellent care of our entertainment that night, and very lavish it was. In particular we were pressed to drink our fill, but in Griffith's house, and on our errand, we did not care to deplete his stores more than we need. He had not yet given us an answer, or we might have been more disposed to carouse with him. But after dinner he excused himself and left us to take counsel with his wife, and came again with a calmed and resolved face.
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 83
